My boyfriend swears by techno when he’s racing to meet a deadline. I crank the show tunes when I need to lose myself in my work. Clearly, everyone has different preferences for listening to music at work.

Fortunately for me, I work from home, so I don’t have to worry about disturbing cubicle mates by singing along to the cast of Glee. Depending on your work environment, you might have to take turns choosing music with several coworkers or discretely plug in headphones when you need a music break. Click Here to Read Article …

I’m a collector of funny or inspirational quotes. They’re great for tweeting or motivating, and as a writer, I appreciate other people’s ability to sum up key messages in as few words as possible. For a long time, I had the following quote by James Thurber scribbled on my whiteboard:

Earlier this summer,The Wealthy Freelancer introduced me to the idea of a 50 minute focus, which is a great way to learn how to improve concentration for better productivity. It’s a simple concept: spend 50 minutes intensively focused on one task, then you give yourself a 20 break and move onto the next item. Click Here to Read Article …

It’s tough making the decision to quit your job, especially now with the unemployment so high. So, how do you know if you should stay or go?

Some people try to stick out a job they don’t love out of fear they’ll get labeled as a “job hopper” or have trouble finding the next gig (after all, most recruiters prefer to hire people who are already employed). Others find that leaving a stressful job frees them up emotionally and logistically to find the next job. Click Here to Read Article …

It’s been one week since I started using Gmail’s Priority Inbox, so I though I’d summarize my experience with an email review. For those of you who haven’t heard about this handy little tool yet, the idea is that Gmail sets up “priority inbox” for important messages and sends the rest to your regular mailbox. Although I’ve been marking tons of emails as important (or not), Priority Inbox is still getting a sense of my email priorities and yes, still marking some of my daily emails as important despite my marking them as not important. Click Here to Read Article …

These days, it seems like everyone from celebrities to small businesses has a Facebook page. If you’re going to market on Facebook, though, it pays to spend the time working out a solid strategy. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and shooting status updates into a black hole. Sure, you could always automate your Facebook page, but giving it that personal interaction and paying attention to your users will often give you a higher ROI.

I was super-psyched when the new Priority Inbox showed up in my Gmail account earlier this week. I typically get 100+ emails on an average weekday, so even with filters and other sorting techniques, it’s hard to stay on top of my inbox.

Might Priority Inbox be the answer?

Time will tell. So far, it assumes that frequency implies importance, and that’s not necessarily the case for me. Sure, I like getting Google Alerts and Groupons daily, but those messages aren’t nearly as important as the less frequent ones from clients and editors. I’ve been marking a lot of emails as “important” (or not), so hopefully that does the trick.

I’ll report back in a week once I’ve had a chance to test drive Priority Inbox a bit more. In the meantime, let us know in the comments if you’ve tried it out yet. What are your initial impressions? Click Here to Read Article …

If you’re anything like I am, then you often find yourself checking email late at night, but you’re hesitant to actually send emails at that hour lest you give clients the impression that you have no life and they can always expect an immediate response from you. Or maybe you have a set of recurring emails that you’re often forgetting to send.